Some say we’re living in the Information Age or the Digital Age. Others, that we’re in the Space Age, the Nuclear Age, the Post-Modernist Age, the Post-Industrial Age and so on.

Many Christians claim we’re in the Sixth Age, the spiritual crowd call it the New Age or the Age of Aquarius, while some scientists fear we’re at the start of a new Ice Age, which is odd given all the warming we keep hearing about.

People will debate whether these ages are real, but if you ask me we’re actually in the middle of another age of humankind — the Age of the Busybody.

You can’t move an inch these days, turn on the television, go for a walk or a drive, or even be a citizen without someone, some company or some government telling you how to live your life.

Do you remember the saying, “To keep a friend, don’t talk about religion or politics?” The maxim is about keeping the peace, but at its root is the notion of minding your own business, something that now, very unfortunately, is out of fashion.

I’m all in favour of recycling, of course, but the recent ads by Encorp are an example of how we’re in the Age of the Busybody. You’ve likely seen them.

Crotchety anthropomorphic beverage containers abuse people who forget to recycle, before the tagline appears: “Every container you don’t recycle says something about you.”

I suppose Encorp is trying to be cute but the ads are so obnoxious and supercilious that they make me want to go dump the items in our blue box into the trash. It’s one thing to encourage recycling, it’s quite another to call someone’s character into question because they tossed an empty pop tin into the garbage.

In another ad, a cartoon woman who chucks an orange-juice carton in the trash is killed when her upstairs neighbour falls through the ceiling in a bathtub. Then the message comes on: “Don’t mess with karma. Always return your drink cartons for recycling.”

Wow … those Encorp folks really are serious about recycling. Since damnation is OK, I imagine re-education camps must be coming for anyone caught putting chicken bones in the garbage now that Metro Vancouver is demanding we compost our organics.

The other day I had to have a test done at the hospital; nothing serious, just one of those increasingly complicated check-the-tires kinds of things doctors keep inventing, bless their hearts — or livers, or kidneys or prostates, depending on their specialty. Anyhow, I was confronted by a sign that the hospital was a “fragrance-free zone” which, if you’ve ever been in a hospital before, you know is total crap, as my Scottish pals say. It’s also other things, mostly fluids.

Like most people, I wear deodorant, something I’m sure most people appreciate, and even a little cologne when the mood strikes me, but it’s not as though eyes start to water when I approach from across the room.

I’m sure someone on the hospital staff can dig up a study suggesting perfumes cause cancer (what doesn’t) and some may not like the smell, or even, in rare cases, be allergic. But it seems pretty intrusive — a sure sign of busybodies — for a hospital to stick its nose into something as intimate as the fragrance habits of the people it’s supposed to serve. Next time I go for a test I may pour Aqua Velva all over myself in protest and wait for what will be a delicious argument.

The extent to which smokers have been regulated is another sign of the Age of the Busybody. I’m not a smoker, smoking is clearly idiotic and the removal of smoking from offices and indoor public spaces is sensible. But the busybodies have pushed it too far with the unreasonable bans on smoking in virtually all outdoor public spaces.

Almost no one is so affected by the odour of tobacco smoke or, almost more commonly in Vancouver, marijuana that smokers shouldn’t be allowed to sit on a log on the beach and light up. If you’re that sensitive, move up wind.

But there is no accommodation or consideration of others in the Age of the Busybody, where everyone insists on imposing themselves on their neighbours. “We know what’s right, you change, and make it snappy,” is how too many of us now think. The old days, where you would accommodate and show respect toward others with different opinions, needs or habits, are, unfortunately, dead.

Beyond making us less tolerant and civil toward each other, one writer says the Age of the Busybody, especially the actions of busybody governments, also stunts our growth.

“One grows by choosing, by selecting between alternatives,” argues Ridgway Foley Jr. in a 2011 essay. “The busybody foreordains decisions … and in so doing diminishes the choice-making opportunities and growth available to his fellow members of society. In this fashion the busybody stunts individual growth and deprives the larger society of the benefits of unfettered productive and constructive human action.”

Bike advocates who close down arterial roads to fellow citizens with other needs or wishes in the name of “sharing” and because they know best how we should all get to work, spring to mind.

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